As one who is installing FreeBSD on my fifth system right now, I can verify FreeBSD isn't bad but it's no Windows. It's a working man's system and you have to get your head into it. btw, most any desktop Linux runs also runs on FreeBSD.

FreeBSD, btw, can run some (all?) Linux binaries better than Linux can due to its architecture. Why? I have to look it up cause I don't remember but it's a well known fact.

Last edited by drhowarddrfine on 23 Jul 2007, 02:04; edited 1 time in total

BSD systems, in particular FreeBSD, can have notably higher performance than Linux. But this is not across the board. In many cases, there is little or no difference in performance. In some cases, Linux may perform better than FreeBSD.

I think Arch Linux (which I'm using right now) may be faster, because it's optimized for i686 or x86_64, while FreeBSD is 386, I think.

For the system as a whole, those compiler flag optimizations actually don't matter that much... there you're more bound by the scheduler, the disk I/O, and architectural choices like how the X windowing system is built.

FreeBSD 7 is currently under development, with the first release scheduled for 2007. Features currently under development include: SCTP, network stack virtualization, UFS journaling, a port of Sun's ZFS file system, GCC4, support for the ARM and MIPS architectures and major updates relating to audio, USB and the scheduler.
...
FreeBSD provides binary compatibility with several other Unix-like operating systems, including Linux. This permits Linux programs to be run, including some commercial applications distributed only in binary form. Applications which use the Linux compatibility layer include StarOffice, the Linux version of Firefox, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, VMware, Oracle, Mathematica, Matlab, WordPerfect, Skype, Doom 3 and Quake 4. There is said to be no noticeable performance penalty when running Linux binaries over native FreeBSD programs, and they may even be faster than the same binaries running on Linux.[6] However, the layer is not completely seamless and some Linux binaries are unusable on FreeBSD or possess limited functionality: this is often as the compatibility layer only supports the system calls available in the historical Linux kernel 2.4.2, work is ongoing to provide Linux 2.6 support.

NetBSD is very portable, OpenBSD is extra secure, but FreeBSD is the most popular.

Just a little warning to anyone installing a freebsd or derivative. Try not to install the X11R6.9.0 package that comes with them. If you want to use the latest programs that require X11R7.2 It's a nightmare to upgrade. I eventually had to install a FreeBSD without any X11 (forgetting to stop it installing one library is a pain as the easiest thing then is start again) then use portsnap to update the ports tree (using csup is very slow and forgetting this bit is the worst of all because you end up spending all afternoon compiling the old X) and then install the new X. Just don't do what I did (make all the above mistakes in the brackets) It took me days to sort it.

The 3 of them share code from time to time, so properly configured they are all secure and fast enough.

On Mac
OS X = Focus on money + a nice user interface.

Others:
PC-BSD = FreeBSD with focus on desktop instead of server. Saves a lot of time installing for desktop and I mean a lot.

FreeBSIE = CD based BSD. so you can try it without need of install

So depends on what do you want to use the OS for. If its for desktop, try PCBSD (Which is a preconfigure FreeBSD). If its for servers FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD wil do, but for maximun security OpenBSD.

FreeBSD 6.2 comes with Xorg 6.9 as it takes a long time to upgrade it. FreeBSD 7 is better, but the NVidia driver at this time does not work, so its useless to me for desktop.

Something that I realized today was that FreeBSD for AMD64 lacks of official nVidia drivers. Imagine how happy I was after installing the system and checking that despite nVidia custumers were asking for this since many years ago, nVidia developers still not released such drivers

My video card is compatible with nv open-source driver but it is not the same...

Something that I realized today was that FreeBSD for AMD64 lacks of official nVidia drivers. Imagine how happy I was after installing the system and checking that despite nVidia custumers were asking for this since many years ago, nVidia developers still not released such drivers

My video card is compatible with nv open-source driver but it is not the same...

I hope nVidia release at least a beta driver soon!

The problem actually lays with the FreeBSD guys. nVidia are more than happy to support FreeBSD on AMD64, however the kernel is missing some features that are required to get it working. eg. extensions to mmap() to allow the driver to define caching technique.

That's one of the reason's why I've switched from FreeBSD to Solaris. (nVidia have drivers for Solaris SPARC, i386 and AMD64).

I was just reading yesterday that Solaris, while good, is lacking in several areas, but I don't recall any details. It just seems strange to me that a board maker would blame an OS for their inability to create a driver; especially when they have existing nvidia drivers now and, iirc, they say drivers will be available later. (Haven't read the interview yet)

EDIT: Had time to listen to half of it. It's interesting they said they don't even use DRI and weren't aware that certain features had been available since 5.0 (FreeBSD 7.0 is due out any day now). It just sound like they put forth any effort on this.

I was just reading yesterday that Solaris, while good, is lacking in several areas, but I don't recall any details.

Yes, it is lacking in some areas (I'll be the first to admit), the biggest IMHO being package management. (I do miss the ports collection from FreeBSD ). The next would be printing (having to manually install CUPS and remove the Sun lp* binaries), but then again that can be a pain for all the Linux/*BSDs/*nix in general. But for general peripheral support, it's pretty damn good. (eg auto detected my iRiver MP3 player, Fuji DSLR camera, Logitech Webcam, and all are usable without any problems).

Quote:

FreeBSD 7.0 is due out any day now

Wasn't 7.0 due out in late July/August?

Even though I'm using Solaris now, I'm still a HUGE fan of FreeBSD and still recommend it over Linux and Solaris for a lot of tasks.

Even though I'm using Solaris now, I'm still a HUGE fan of FreeBSD and still recommend it over Linux and Solaris for a lot of tasks.

As you know, nothing is ever really "due". It's done when it's done and dates are just targets. There was a hangup with something and they would have made their target but they fixed two things and wanted a thorough testing.

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